Haunted MTL Original – Where All The Deadbeats Go – Jenni Chavis
“Where All The Deadbeats Go” by Jenni Chavis
I roll over and stretch. A drop of water lands on my forehead. My mind is thick with slumber, but my muscles ache like I ran a marathon the day before. The water droplet rolls into my ear, and then another drop lands in the same spot. I sit up slowly on the hard, wooden rack and squint. Where am I? I try to remember any detail about last night or the day before.
How did I get here? Where’s here?
Nothing. Nothing comes to mind. The answers, just beyond my reach, slip away when I get close. They are there, but I can’t get a handle on them.
C’mon, Ray! Think.
A warm breeze blows over me. It smells like dead fish and salty water. Behind me is a small opening in the wall with short vertical bars. A full moon is the only light outside, and it gives a little bit of light in here. The ground is rocky. No houses or buildings out there, just mounds of sand and rocks. Sea birds squawk in the distance. This looks nothing like Harrisburg. I’ve never been here before. My muscles strain as I grab the bars and pull. Nothing happens. The opening is too small. My shoulders are too broad to fit through the opening even if there were no bars.
I step back and rub my temples. I shake my head hoping to shake loose a memory of how I got here. It stinks in here. It smells like a damp balled-up dishrag drying under a sink. The stench fogs my brain. Even thinking hurts. Cheryl. I remember Cheryl. We argued.
When was that? Last night?
* * *
“Fool, what happened?” Cheryl asked. She shrugged her shoulders.
“Here we go.” I rolled my head.
“You don’t have the luxury of quitting a job. Not again.” Cheryl leaned back and crossed her arms. “The last time you lost your job I had to hold down the family for 7 months. I’m not going through that again.”
I propped my feet up on the coffee table. “Babe, look, I am a grown man. I was going nowhere at that job. Plus, the boss hated me. She’s a chick, and I’m not working for some chick who disrespects me. And, I’m not gonna be with a woman who disrespects me either.” I put my hands behind my head. “After all this time together, you still don’t get me.”
“I don’t care what your boss thought about you.” Cheryl slapped my feet off the table. Geez, this woman hits hard.
“All I care about is this house and our daughter. I got one child, and it’s not you.” She brushed the table with her hands where my feet were. Humph, she’s trying to wipe me away. “It’s bad enough I had to pay child support for your other 5 kids to keep you out of jail. I’m not working double shifts to support you and your kids. And, as for living with a woman who disrespects you, you don’t have to live here.”
I sucked my teeth as loud as possible. “Girl, please. You need me.”
Cheryl’s eyes widened. “Go live with your momma. Let her take care of you, again.” She stomped out of the room to the kitchen.
“So, what, that’s it? You want me to go?” I heard the familiar sound of cabinet doors slamming and Cheryl mumbling under her breath.
“I don’t need you,” I yelled towards the kitchen. “You need me. You’re getting older, woman. Who else is gonna want you? You ain’t going to find no one better.”
“Pff. If you are the best that’s out there, I’d rather be by myself!”
“Yeah, that’s what you’ll be, all by yourself. I don’t need this. I’m out.” I grabbed my jacket off the chair. Hmm, same chair where her purse sat. I looked towards the kitchen and listened for a moment, then dug into her purse and found a few $20 dollar bills.
Uh huh, this is for my trouble.
I shoved the bills into my pocket. Before I left, I stopped at the door to give her a chance to beg me to stay. I waited a minute, then another. Man, forget this.
The door slammed behind me on my way out. “Just so you know, it’s you, not me, baby!” I hollered. “I’ll find somebody better. Somebody who can appreciate me.”
* * *
Remembering the argument doesn’t help me figure out how I got here because I didn’t come in through that opening with the bars. The moon is behind a cloud now, and the room darkens. I can’t see past my bare feet. There has to be a door. I feel along the nearest wall. Stone. Slimy, damp stones.
A wooden rack to sleep on and stone walls. What is this, a dungeon?
I need to get a feel for the dimensions of the room. My hand slips across the goo on a stone. It smells like mildew. I slide my bare right foot forward on the cold floor, then my left foot. I count 15 rough horizontal stones until I get to a corner. There are another four stones along the connecting wall, then a door. It has no knob, but it feels heavy and wooden. A coarse metal square with a small hole sits about waist high on the door. Nothing on the floor between where I started and the door. I keep going.
I bump into a soft lump balled up in the corner. I suck in my breath.
“Ah, what the…”
I stumble, wanting to grab onto something to steady me.
The lump moans.
“Who’s there,” I say. My heart races. “Say something. I know you’re there.”
The lump groans. “I…it’s me…I’m here.”
I ball my fists. “Who’s me?” My hands are at my chest ready to square off. “I can’t see you.”
I hear something sliding on the stone. “Zenon. It’s me, Zenon…Zee” It’s the lump, moving up the wall. I feel the hair on my arm stand up and my skin tingles.
“Don’t you remember, Ray? Zee from Double J’s.” She sounds confident. She sounds upright.
“Stay back.” I look over my shoulder for anything I can use to hit her back into a lump
“‘Stay back’? That’s not what you said in Double J’s.” Her voice sounds playful and certain. “There, you were all, ‘Come ‘ere, babe.’”
The clouds move, and the moon shines into the room again.
“Where are we? Why are we here,” I said opening my eyes wide to get a glimpse of Zee. She’s naked. A scent of coconut oil and flowers cuts through a pungent aroma of stress sweat. Light reflects off her brown skin, which looks slick and wet. Built the way I like ‘em. Big breasts, tiny waist, and full hips I can grab onto. Something is familiar about her.
“Oh Ray, so many questions. Why don’t you ask me the questions you asked in the bar?” Her voice moves around the room while she speaks. “You gotta man? Can I get you a drink?” Zee makes her voice deep as she imitates my voice. “You wanna go back to your place? Mmm-mmm, can I get that?” Zee chuckles, and it echoes. “Remember those questions, Ray?”
A memory flashes of a woman in a red dress dancing alone on the middle of the floor. Warmth rushes into my belly.
Thick brown hair moving over bare cinnamon colored shoulders. Hazel eyes. Red dress. Brown arms sway above her head. Hips rock to the rhythm of a Bruno Mars song. Her sides arch one way and then the other as she reaches her hands up higher in time with her hips.
I drop my hands to my side and unclench my fists. My mind tells me to be ready to fight, but that woman on the dance floor in my mind’s eye takes the fight out of me. Rather than tensing up to fight, I sway like I am dancing with her in the bar.
A slow smile spreads across Zee’s face. “That’s it, baby. You remember, don’t you?”
Sitting with her hands on the bar and tossing her hair back, she’s having a good time. Her head tilts back, and she bares her gleaming white teeth as she laughs. She’s having a good time with me. She lets me nuzzle her neck and put a hand on her exposed knee. She stops laughing and looks at me as I graze my thumb higher up her thigh and under the hem of her red dress.
“You remember that s-s-s-sensation, right,” Zee hisses. The sound coils near the wood cot behind me and then over my head.
Heat moves from my belly down my legs. A sweet scent like cotton candy cuts through the moldy smell. It makes me dizzy. I shake my head to clear the dullness of my senses. The moon ducks behind another cloud, and I stretch my arms out in front of me trying to find Zee.
“Where. . .where are you,” I ask and languidly spin around reaching for her. My head no longer aches. I’m floating. The soreness is gone. My voice bounces off the stones and sounds far away like I am in a tunnel. She’s close to me. I feel her, but I can’t find her. She’s everywhere but nowhere at once. Flesh moves across stone behind me, beneath me, and beside me. I wipe my clammy hands onto my bare thighs.
“A-a-answer me. I mean it.” My lip quivers, but I know it isn’t because of a breeze. “You don’t want none of this.” I try to make my voice sound big and deep, but it comes mewing out.
“Oh yes, I do. I do want some of that, or should I say, some more of that.” Scaly tentacles encircle my head and under my shoulders. They are thick and heavy, but they move quickly around my waist to between my legs. My knees buckle, but the appendages hold me tightly and keep me from falling.
Zee somersaults and lands in front of me. Moonlight shines through the clouds, and she comes into view. She has tentacles in place of her sexy dancing arms. She tightens her grip. My body stands erect. Light glints on her eyes, and they reflect green.
“You are perfect, Ray.” She moves in closer. Zee’s eyebrows lift when she says ‘perfect.’ “So eager. Eager to get what you want and then eager to run away. People don’t get you, do they?” She tilts her head side-to-side as she talks. “I get you, Ray. I saw you and had to have you.”
She smiles. But rather than the white teeth, her mouth is now filled with rows of sharp yellow spikes with green pus around the gums. Her smile pushes the flesh on her face back in an unnatural way. The skin bunches near her ears.
“You’re everything I wanted in a male.” Zee tilts her neck again, and her vertebrae cracks down her spine. “You’re just the type to father my babies. All my babies.” The brown, silky skin I rubbed in Double J’s turns to large, ashen flakes. A gust of wind blows it away. “I’m not looking to be tied down. . . just like you. I’m not looking for a male to hang around trying to make a family . . . just like you don’t stick around. Basically, I am looking for an eager donor . . . just like you.”
All the good parts that sat in all the right places plop downward by 2 feet and expand outward. The curvy goddess that excited me in that bar has transformed into a fat reptilian blob. I’m scared, man, I’m freakin out. My heart is in my throat, and pee runs down my leg. She laughs. She throws her head back, bares her spikey teeth, and laughs at me. Red folds of skin ridge the top of her head and down her back like a lizard.
“B-b-babies,” I say with a stutter. “We’ve both been locked in here since last night. It’ll take months just to have one. We got no food or clothes. We won’t be able to survive.”
Though she stands about a foot away from me, I can feel her rough, dry tongue slide into my ear.
I try slapping her away. “Aw naw! Get away from me!”
“See, Ray, that’s why I picked you. You’re enthusiastic but not too bright. Just what I’m looking for in a donor.” Her forked tongue flicks my ear lobe. “I’m not locked in here. You are. And, I have already had your babies. Hundreds of them.”
I try wrestling my hands free by twisting my wrists. I slap and punch at the tentacles binding me.
“You have been here as my guest for two months. Oh well, we go through this every time I visit your quarters. But don’t worry, tonight I am not here for a donation.” Zee moans and bends forward. Her moaning turns to long guttural lowing like a heifer about to expel a calf.
“It’s time. Time for us to bring our little lovelies into the world. I don’t want you to miss it.” The dawning sun reflects onto the walls around me. I can see her…it clearer. Heinous. Knobby and scaly and…
One tentacle grabs the bucket and places it on the floor between us. The moans get stronger and louder.
“Oh, Ray. They’re coming. Look.”
My body doesn’t know what to do.
“No.” I shake my head. “No, I can’t.”
“Watch, Ray,” she growls and tightens her grip. “Look at what we made!”
A hole the size of a grapefruit opens in her midsection. Strings of mucus stretch across the hole.
Puke, I definitely need to puke.
A foul stench of rotten eggs puffs out from the gaping crater. Green sludge sputters out. Some of it lands on my cheeks and lips. I try to spit the gooey ropes of slime out my mouth but it’s too thick. It runs down my throat, and I swallow it down hard.
Zee grunts. Slow at first but then in rhythm.
“Uh…uh…uuh…uuuhh…UUUHH.”
The grunts get louder.
“Uh…uh…uuh…uuuhhh…UUUHHH!”
“Please. Please, no. Let me go. Please,” I say between my sobs.
“You want to go now? This is the best part.” She moans through her gritted teeth. Gray globs gather at her opening and eject from her bulging stomach. After each ball plops into the bucket, she sighs and shudders. The bucket is almost full. She grinds her teeth and bares down as she pushes. As she grunts out the last ball, Zee . . . she . . . it sighs and blows her rank breath in my face. She releases me, and I fall to the ground.
“Careful now, babe,” she says with a breathy sigh as she turns toward the door. “Don’t go damaging the goods. I need you to have more little ones. Plus, I want to have some more fun with you before I gobble you up.”
As I lay on my side, I draw my knees up toward my chest and cup my hands in front of my mouth.
“No, this can’t be. I’m a good guy. I’m dreaming. This can’t be real.”
My gut hardens, and I can’t swallow because of a lump in my throat.
“I wanna go back home.” I reach out to Zee. “Please, I want Cheryl. I’m sorry. Please.”
Zee leans down and puts her face near mine. “Now you want Cheryl?” Her breath stings as I breathe it in. “Yes, it is your fault. I only picked you because you are such a deadbeat. Six kids and you walked away from all of them. Mmm, my kind of guy.”
Zee straightens up and looks down at me. She wipes a tear off my cheek with her tentacle. “Aw, honey,” she said. “I should be offended that you keep forgetting me after each of our encounters, but I suppose this is a bit intense. Who would have thought that a man who talked such a big game was so fragile? You talked a big game at the bar about your kids and not staying with the mothers. Stop crying like a baby.” She swiped some of the gray goo that dangled from the bucket and slathered it into my mouth. I gag on the sticky slop and the thickness of her tentacle.
“Eat up, babe. You’ll need your strength for tomorrow night. I’ll be back for another donation.” Green light shone from between her scales. The tentacles retracted. Two, long jelly-like ones morphed back into arms. The lizard flesh transformed into the woman I met in the bar, red dress and all. She shrugged her shoulders. One hand held the bucket filled with slimy globules and the other hand pounded on the door. It opened.
I cry harder, louder. “Please, let me go. I just want to go home.”
“Home? Ray, you know there’s nothing for you there. No one to appreciate you. That’s why you are here. You were made for this life. All the sex and babies you want and no responsibilities. This is the life you had out there. You can’t handle all this? Hmm, it must be you, not me.”
What if ours weren’t the only reality? What if the past paths converged, if those moments that led to our current circumstances got tangled together with their alternates and we found ourselves caught up in the threads?
Marla returned home after the funeral and wake. She drew the key in the lock and opened the door slowly, the looming dread of coming back to an empty house finally sinking in. Everyone else had gone home with their loved ones. They had all said, “goodbye,” and moved along.
Her daughter Misty and son-in-law Joel had caught a flight to Springfield so he could be at work the next day for the big meeting. Her brother Darcy was on his way back to Montreal. Emmett and Ruth were at home next door, probably washing dishes from the big meal they had helped to provide afterward, seeing as their kitchen light was on. Marla remembered there being food but couldn’t recall what exactly as she hadn’t felt like eating. Sandwiches probably… she’d have to thank them later.
Marla had felt supported up until she turned the key in the lock after the services, but then the realization sank deep in her throat like acid reflux, hanging heavy on her heart – everyone else had other lives to return to except for her. She sighed and stepped through the threshold onto the outdated beige linoleum tile and the braided rag rug that stretched across it. She closed the door behind herself and sighed again. She wiped her shoes reflexively on the mat before just kicking them off to land in a haphazard heap in the entryway.
The still silence of the house enveloped her, its oppressive emptiness palpable – she could feel it on her skin, taste it on her tongue. It was bitter. She sighed and walked purposefully to the living room, the large rust-orange sofa waiting to greet her. She flopped into its empty embrace, dropping her purse at her side as she did so.
A familiar, husky voice greeted her from deeper within the large, empty house. “Where have you been?”
Marla looked up and glanced around. Her husband Frank was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, drying a bowl. Marla gasped, her hand shooting to her mouth. Her clutched appendage took on a life of its own, slowly relinquishing itself of her gaping jaw and extending a first finger to point at the specter.
“Frank?” she spoke hesitantly.
“Yeah,” the man replied, holding the now-dry bowl nestled in the faded blue-and-white-checkered kitchen towel in both hands. “Who else would you expect?”
“But you’re dead,” Marla spat, the words falling limply from her mouth of their own accord.
The 66-year old man looked around confusedly and turned to face Marla, his silver hair sparkling in the light from the kitchen, illuminated from behind like a halo. “What are you talking about? I’m just here washing up after lunch. You were gone so I made myself some soup. Where have you been?”
“No, I just got home from your funeral,” Marla spoke quietly. “You are dead. After the boating accident… You drowned. I went along to the hospital – they pronounced you dead on arrival.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frank said. “What boating accident?”
“The sailboat… You were going to take me out,” Marla coughed, her brown eyes glossed over with tears.
“We don’t own a sailboat,” Frank said bluntly. “Sure, I’d thought about it – it seems like a cool retirement hobby – but it’s just too expensive. We’ve talked about this, we can’t afford it.”
Marla glanced out the bay window towards the driveway where the small sailboat sat on its trailer, its orange hull reminiscent of the Florida citrus industry, and also of the life jacket Frank should have been wearing when he’d been pulled under. Marla cringed and turned back toward the kitchen. She sighed and spoke again, “But the boat’s out front. The guys at the marina helped to bring it back… after you… drowned.”
Frank had retreated to the kitchen to put away the bowl. Marla followed. She stood in the doorway and studied the man intently. He was unmistakably her husband, there was no denying it even despite her having just witnessed his waxen lifeless body in the coffin at the wake before the burial, though this Frank was a slight bit more overweight than she remembered.
“Well, that’s not possible. Because I’m still here,” Frank grumbled. He turned to face her, his blue eyes edged with worry. “There now, it was probably just a dream. You knew I wanted a boat and your anxiety just formulated the worst-case scenario…”
“See for yourself,” Marla said, her voice lilting with every syllable.
Frank strode into the living room and stared out the bay window. The driveway was vacant save for some bits of Spanish moss strewn over the concrete from the neighboring live oak tree. He turned towards his wife.
“But there’s no boat,” he sighed. “You must have had a bad dream. Did you fall asleep in the car in the garage again?” Concern was written all over his face, deepening every crease and wrinkle. “Is that where you were? The garage?”
Marla glanced again at the boat, plain as day, and turned to face Frank. Her voice grew stubborn. “It’s right here. How can you miss it?” she said, pointing at the orange behemoth.
“Honey, there’s nothing there,” Frank exclaimed, exasperation creeping into his voice.
Marla huffed and strode to the entryway, gathering her shoes from where they waited in their haphazard heap alongside the braided rag run on the worn linoleum floor. She marched out the door as Frank took vigil in its open frame, still staring at her. She stomped out to the boat and slapped her hand on the fiberglass surface with a resounding smack. The boat was warm to the touch, having baked in the Florida sun. She turned back towards the front door.
“See!” she bellowed.
The door stood open, empty. No one was there, watching. Marla sighed again and walked back inside. The vacant house once again enveloped her in its oppressive emptiness. Frank was nowhere to be found.
So I guess it’s goodbye for now. Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
Today on Nightmarish Nature we’re gonna revisit The Blob and jiggle our way to terror. Why? ‘Cause we’re just jellies – looking at those gelatinous denizens of the deep, as well as some snot-like land-bound monstrosities, and wishing we could ooze on down for some snoozy booze schmoozing action. Or something.
Honestly, I don’t know what exactly it is that jellyfish and slime molds do but whatever it is they do it well, which is why they’re still around despite being among the more ancient organism templates still in common use.
Jellyfish are on the rise.
Yeah, yeah, some species like moon jellies will hang out in huge blooms near the surface feeding, but that’s not what I meant. Jellyfish populations are up. They’re honing in on the open over-fished ocean and making themselves at home. Again.
And, although this makes the sea turtles happy since jellies are a favorite food staple of theirs, not much else is excited about the development. Except for those fish that like to hide out inside of their bells, assuming they don’t accidentally get eaten hanging out in there. But that’s a risk you gotta take when you’re trying to escape predation by surrounding yourself in a bubble of danger that itself wants to eat you. Be eaten or be eaten. Oh, wait…
So what makes jellies so scary?
Jellyfish pack some mighty venom. Despite obvious differences in mobility, they are related to anemones and corals. But not the Man o’ War which looks similar but is actually a community of microorganisms that function together as a whole, not one creature. Not that it matters when you’re on the wrong end of a nematocyst, really. Because regardless what it’s attached to, that stings.
Box jellies are among the most venomous creatures in the world and can move of their own accord rather than just drifting about like many smaller jellyfish do. And even if they aren’t deadly, the venom from many jellyfish species will cause blisters and lesions that can take a long time to heal. So even if they do resemble free-floating plastic grocery bags, you’d do best to steer clear. Because those are some dangerous curves.
But what does this have to do with slime molds?
Absolutely nothing. I honestly don’t know enough about jellyfish or slime molds to devote the whole of a Nightmarish Nature segment to either, so they had to share. Essentially, this bit is what happened when I decided to toast a bagel before coming up with something to write about and spent a tad too much time in contemplation of my breakfast. I guess we’re lucky I didn’t have any cream cheese or clotted cream…
Oh, and also thinking about gelatinous cubes and oozes in the role-playing game sense – because those sort of seem like a weird hybrid between jellies and slime molds, as does The Blob. Any of those amoeba influenced creatures are horrific by their very nature – they don’t even need to be souped up, just ask anyone who’s had dysentery.
And one of the most interesting thing about slime molds is that they can take the shortest path to food even when confronted with very complex barriers. They are maze masterminds and would give the Minotaur more than a run for his money, especially if he had or was food. They have even proven capable of determining the most efficient paths for water lines or railways in metropolitan regions, which is kind of crazy when you really think about it. Check it out in Scientific American here. So, if we assume that this is essentially the model upon which The Blob was built, then it’s kind of a miracle anything got away. And slime molds are coming under closer scrutiny and study as alternative means of creating computer components are being explored.
Jellies are the Wave of the Future.
We are learning that there may be a myriad of uses for jellyfish from foodstuffs to cosmetic products as we rethink how we interact with them. They are even proving useful in cleaning up plastic pollution. I don’t know how I feel about the foodstuff angle for all that they’ve been a part of various recipes for a long time. From what I’ve seen of the jellyfish cookbook recipes, they just don’t look that appealing. But then again I hate boba with a passion, so I’m probably not the best candidate to consider the possibility.
So it seems that jellies are kind of the wave of the future as we find that they can help solve our problems. That’s pretty impressive for some brainless millions of years old critter condiments. Past – present – perpetuity! Who knows what else we’d have found if evolution hadn’t cleaned out the fridge every so often?
Feel free to check out more Nightmarish Nature here.
Continuing our junkyard dawg werewolf story from the previous St. Patrick’s Days… though technically he’s more of a wolfwere but wolfwhatever. Anyway, here are Part 1 from 2022, Part 2 from 2023 and Part 3 from 2024 if you want to catch up.
Yeah I don’t know how you managed to find me after all this time. We haven’t been the easiest to track down, Monty and I, and we like it that way. Though actually, you’ve managed to find me every St. Patrick’s Day since 2022 despite me being someplace else every single time. It’s a little disconcerting, like I’m starting to wonder if I was microchipped way back in the day in 2021 when I was out lollygagging around and blacked out behind that taco hut…
Anyway as I’d mentioned before, that Scratchers was a winner. And I’d already moved in with Monty come last St. Patrick’s Day. Hell, he’d already begun the process of cashing in the Scratchers, and what a process that was. It made my head spin, like too many squirrels chirping at you from three different trees at once. We did get the money eventually though.
Since I saw you last, we were kicked out of Monty’s crap apartment and had gone to live with his parents while we sorted things out. Thank goodness that was short-lived; his mother is a nosy one for sure, and Monty didn’t want to let on he was sitting on a gold mine as he knew they’d want a cut even though they had it made already. She did make a mean brisket though, and it sure beat living with Sal. Just sayin.
Anyway, we finally got a better beater car and headed west. I was livin’ the dream. We were seeing the country, driving out along old Route 66, for the most part. At least until our car broke down just outside of Roswell near the mountains and we decided to just shack it up there. (Boy, Monty sure can pick ‘em. It’s like he has radar for bad cars. Calling them lemons would be generous. At least it’s not high maintenance women who won’t toss you table scraps or let you up on the sofa.)
We found ourselves the perfect little cabin in the woods. And it turns out we were in the heart of Bigfoot Country, depending on who you ask. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never seen one. But it seems that Monty was all into all of those supernatural things: aliens, Bigfoot, even werewolves. And finding out his instincts on me were legit only added fuel to that fire. So now he sees himself as some sort of paranormal investigator.
Whatever. I keep telling him this werewolf gig isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and it doesn’t work like in the movies. I wasn’t bitten, and I generally don’t bite unless provoked. He says technically I’m a wolfwere, to which I just reply “Where?” and smile. Whatever. It’s the little things I guess. I just wish everything didn’t come out as a bark most of the time, though Monty’s gotten pretty good at interpreting… As long as he doesn’t get the government involved, and considering his take on the government himself that would seem to be a long stretch. We both prefer the down low.
So here we are, still livin’ the dream. There aren’t all that many rabbits out here but it’s quiet and the locals don’t seem to notice me all that much. And Monty can run around and make like he’s gonna have some kind of sighting of Bigfoot or aliens or the like. As long as the pantry’s stocked it’s no hair off my back. Sure, there are scads of tourists, but they can be fun to mess around with, especially at that time of the month if I happen to catch them out and about.
Speaking of tourists, I even ran into that misspent youth from way back in 2021 at the convenience store; I spotted him at the Quickie Mart along the highway here. I guess he and his girlfriend were apparently on walkabout (or car-about) perhaps making their way to California or something. He even bought me another cookie. Small world. But we all knew that already…
If you enjoyed this werewolf wolfwere wolfwhatever saga, feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
James Chavis
September 15, 2020 at 11:05 pm
Outstanding!